Poll: How many CC before success with your S3?

[glassonion]

I am at 3 and still without success...

[mr.unnatural]

I just had Verizon FIOS installed on Friday and they set up my S3 Tivo with a pair of cablecards that worked fine. It probably took about 45 minutes to an hour before they got them working but they're both working on all channels from what I've seen so far. I had two techs perform the install for my TV, internet, and phone service and both of them had only done one or two S3 Tivos prior to mine so they were still low on the learning curve.

They did mention that they had seen an e-mail regarding S3 Tivo and cablecard issues so they were not completely unfamiliar with them. I think the main problem lies in the fact that they have to communicate with someone over the phone to get the cards set up from the main office and it seems like someone was fat-fingering the numbers at the other end. They had to re-enter the numbers several times before getting the cards to work.

[jbrasure]

I had good success with Comcast in the Bay Area. I have two Tivo S3's for a total of 4 CableCards. All of them worked the first time.

Glassonion, I'm sorry to hear about your streak of bad luck. I'm just curious, where do you live, and who is your cable provider?

[Amnesia]

First bad, next two good.

[bdraw]

I also have 2 S3s and all 4 CableCARDs worked the first time around.
BHN in Tampa FL with SA CableCARDs.

[pkscout]

Two good cards, one good installer. I think both are required. Cox cable Las Vegas.

[aaronwt]

Six good SA cards in my three Series 3 boxes. The only problem was making sure the right person had the correct information at the headend to get them working properly.

[nhaigh]

Installed the two cablecards the first week the S3 was available and they have both worked find from the outset.

[GoHokies!]

No problems here from the first week.

[morac]

I put that the first set work, but that's only partially true. The installed brought 3 cards with him. The first one worked okay, the second one kept generating errors, but the 3rd one worked fine as well.

Things have been working fine since the initial install so other than one bad card, things went fine.

It did take 4 hours to complete the install though. The installer said it was one of the better installs he's seen. He also said he despises cableCARDS. :)

[glassonion]

jbrasure

I use Cox and live in Norfolk, VA. Trying another set either tomorrow or Wed. Wish me luck.

[BB3]

The ones that worked were #2 and #6. But no problems since then.

Knock on wood.

[Mike Farrington]

I didn't answer the poll because all my problems were with the head end. Though I did have about 7 cards pass through my system. Of those, 2 didn't seem to work right. Howerver, I don't think they were faulty. I just don't think they had been configured for the local system yet (weren't entered into their inventory control system).

[fkingpsuce]

I get my 2 cards installed today (just got the S3 yesterday) ...is there anything I should be aware of before the installer comes?

[TAsunder]

First set of cards worked fine... am I wrong in assuming that the bad cable card issue is slowly dwindling away as they become more wide spread?

[larrs]

An installer who had S3 experience really helped. In and out in 10 minutes.

[Dennis Wilkinson]

Two good cards, one mostly clueless installer who I was able to talk through it, largely thanks to folks here who posted their prior experience.

[Corran Horn]

Three in total. Original installer brought 3. One ended up going all zeros on me and was replaced. They're both fine now.

[prisk]

Two good cards, one good installer. I think both are required. Cox cable Las Vegas.

Two good cards, a clueless installer. But he followed my directions (printed from this forum) well. He wasn't actually allowed to touch the TiVo. All was up and running in less than 1/2 hour. Comcast, Chicago.

[Cajun Man]

When I first ordered CableCard service through my CableCo (TimeWarner Rochester NY), I discovered that CCs with a manufacture date earlier than 2005 did not function properly. (Several cards with 2004 dates were brought by technicians during various visits.) This issue was seen both on my S3, as well as my CC-capable Sony TV, so I am confident it was not an S3-specific issue.

On a somewhat related note, TimeWarner -- at least here in Rochester -- recently deployed updated software to all CCs installed in the field. The build date is now May 10 2006, while it was formerly May 2 2005 -- at least in the three CCs I have.

[Leo_N]

I got lucky I think. 4 good ones right in a row.

[rdrrepair]

I have Time Warner in Newburgh and the install went without a hitch.

Now, onto the funny.

The technician they sent out wanted to know why I just didn't get there DVR,

He asked: What makes these thing so desirable that you would want to pay rent to TiVo for more money a month and still not have PPV or VOD?

So I took him on the nickle tour of my S3 - I showed him the ease of use and the audio files and the download for TiVo cast on my series2 and the networking ability and the games and the season pass manager etc.. then I handed him the remote.

I told him where the select, volume and the channel buttons were and he operated it like it was second nature - he fell in love with the TiVo and said something like: I see why you want your TiVo and not our DVR.

[demon]

My first pair of CableCards worked without a hitch. The tech was inexperienced with them at the time (in November), but was willing enough to learn; it took less than an hour, all told.

This is in the Albany, NY area.

[CraigHB]

Card 2 bad on initial install. Tech came out the next day with a new card. Got it up and running right away. Both cards have been been working fine since.

[fkingpsuce]

Card 1 was good, Card 2 was bad ...so they borrowed the one from the TV and all is well.

[mikeyts]

The sad story of my S3 CableCARD installation is in this (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9727820&&#post9727820) post on AVS Forum. Basically, one stupid mistake by an installer caused about four hours of feckless diagnostics, but when that mistake was corrected, the first two CableCARDs he tried worked without a problem.

[CraigHB]

Yea, hehe, pretty hard to get cablecards working with the cable connected to the antenna input. It's easy to make that mistake if you're not paying close enough attention. The tech should have at least tried to get the cablecards working before fiddling with the connections. There was no reason for him to do that. But, what are you going to do? You're pretty much at the mercy of these guys so you can only hope you get someone who has a clue or at least doesn't insist on doing things the wrong way.

[mikeyts]

I was just going to let the whole thing go (he was a nice kid and it was an honest, if bone-headed, mistake), except that the bill came in an I found that they'd charged me $30 for each card, for a total installation charage of $60. I argued with a CSR at a Cox office in a nearby shopping center and got one of the $30 fees removed--he said that he'd have waived it altogether but there was no note in the service log about it (yeah--I'm sure that the guy told his supervisor all about it :rolleyes: ).

They're also charging me 2 $7/month digital cable access fees :rolleyes:. It's still cheaper than lease of a DVR and "DVR service fees".

[glassonion]

Another set of brand new CC with latest firmware. No luck. Still tiling.

btw old set of "malfunctioning" CC from my S3 worked beautifully in test LG TV set the Cox tech brought to the house during install over the course of 45 minutes...doh

[bareyb]

I had good success with Comcast in the Bay Area. I have two Tivo S3's for a total of 4 CableCards. All of them worked the first time.

Glassonion, I'm sorry to hear about your streak of bad luck. I'm just curious, where do you live, and who is your cable provider?

Comcast SEEMS to be getting it together in the Bay Area. I have two S3's and one of them took two extra cards to get working. The other one worked with the first set. Turns out the second set of cards were the "old ones" (red in color I believe) and once replaced with the "newer" ones (green?) all was well and has been working as expected since November 2006.

[Raj]

Our S3 worked with the first set of cards they were fed.

However the cable guys (contractors) had to call the office.

One of them even put the cable in the "Antenna" socket. Didn't work. I changed it over to "cable in" and then he slapped his forehead.

Pretty much smooth sailing after that.

The cableco is service electric of Sparta, NJ.

[CraigHB]

They're also charging me 2 $7/month digital cable access fees :rolleyes:. It's still cheaper than lease of a DVR and "DVR service fees".I just got my first bill from Charter after switching from DirecTV. I never thought I'd be able to say this, but Charter is turning out to be a pretty dang good service provder. Several years ago, I was glad to leave them because their prices were relatively high and their service was not that reliable. After coming back, I've found prices have NOT gone up at ALL and service has improved greatly. Who'd've thunk. Charter is only charging me $1.50 per card. That's it, no outlet fees. They also waived the setup fee. Wasn't that nice of them? I'm getting $17 discount for the first year, but my bill is only $43 a month, sweet.

[Gregor]

My first S3 worked great with cards 2 and 3.

I had to replace the S3 (bad disk) and the cards were deemed faulty by the next installer, and then replaced because Comcast couldn't figure out how to make the cards get HBO.

Cards 4 and 5 are now installed, one gets only basic cable, the other gets the full channel selection I'm supposed to have.

They're supposed to return on Monday.

[glassonion]

Gregor,

How did you prove your S3 had a "bad disc"? No recordings, etc.??


To all,

Should I bother with a second replacement S3 (#3 total including original purchase)? Anyone have success after multiple S3 replacements...I'm sorta inclined to fold at this point and be done with it...

[GoHokies!]

Sadly, I think that no number of S3s is going to fix Cox Norfolk's blazing idiocy. They're one of the things that I miss least about Norfolk (and that's a pretty tall order, since I despised almost every minute I was stationed there).

Sadly, you're going to have to pray for an installer/headend tech/account person that has a clue, learn to play hardball until they find someone that can give you success, or throw in the towel.

[glassonion]

GoHokies,

Actually I did have a high end tech who was sympathetic to my cause. I had his personal number and we talked multiple times over several days as various tech visits were going on (I was working an evening shifts for a week which gave me ample daytime to schedule truck rollouts). He was the one who personally checked out these last set of cards. He tells me some people (who or how many I dunno) in the area have functioning S3, but every tech I've seen says they all have this tiling problem...which leaves me holding my sad little towel...now with my arm cocked to throw it...

[GoHokies!]

Dang, that really sucks - and you're sure that it isn't a signal strength issue?

What part of Norfolk are you in? I lived in Colonial Place for the 4 years I was there.

[glassonion]

I'm in Edgewater near ODU. Used to live in Va Bch growing up...

I don't think it's a signal strength issue anymore, although I did for a while.

I refer you to my full-fledge troubleshooting thread (http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?t=342103)

I would assume the tiling would have stopped with the incoming signal drop-off and/or attenuator use, but how can you really know for sure?? I mean it's now officially "within specs" and they tried even additional lower dbs...the whole thing just sucks...

[Gregor]

My first S3 worked great with cards 2 and 3.

I had to replace the S3 (bad disk) and the cards were deemed faulty by the next installer, and then replaced because Comcast couldn't figure out how to make the cards get HBO.

Cards 4 and 5 are now installed, one gets only basic cable, the other gets the full channel selection I'm supposed to have.

They're supposed to return on Monday.

Success today. I showed the tech the conditional access screens which had card 1 showing "missing_program_rekey" and card 2 showing "subscribed". Card 1 only had basic cable and card 2 had all the channels.

The tech relayed this information and the tech on the other end of the phone sent a 'maintenance' hit to card 1 which shuts the card down and reinitializes it. This fixed the problem. We got a 161-4 and the card then showed "subscribed" and the channels showed up a few moments later.

The tech was very happy as he had only seen 1 other S3 and said they didn't work with cable cards very often.

[CraigHB]

I think TiVos generally "work" with cablcards. The problem is almost always incorrect setup on the service provider's end or defective cards. Although, the techs like to say, "Cablecards are flakey and hardly ever work right," implying the hardware design is faulty. They should be saying "We are inexperienced/poorly trained in setting them up and have a lot of problems getting them configured properly." Truth is, they don't like them and the providers don't want to train their people. But, they better get used to it because they're going to have to implement them in their own set top boxes eventually. That is of course, if the FCC follows through on the integration ban.

[Gregor]

I think TiVos generally "work" with cablcards. The problem is almost always incorrect setup on the service provider's end or defective cards. Although, the techs like to say, "Cablecards are flakey and hardly ever work right," implying the hardware design is faulty. They should be saying "We are inexperienced/poorly trained in setting them up and have a lot of problems getting them configured properly." Truth is, they don't like them and the providers don't want to train their people. But, they better get used to it because they're going to have to implement them in their own set top boxes eventually. That is of course, if the FCC follows through on the integration ban.

Well said. Every tech I've had at my house says they don't deal much with cable cards, and I had to prevent them from just jamming the cards in and calling them in.

It took me 3 visits to get them configured correctly, and I am very sure that the problem the entire time was that the were not set up correctly in the conditional access system.

[cableguy763]

I think TiVos generally "work" with cablcards. The problem is almost always incorrect setup on the service provider's end or defective cards. Although, the techs like to say, "Cablecards are flakey and hardly ever work right," implying the hardware design is faulty. They should be saying "We are inexperienced/poorly trained in setting them up and have a lot of problems getting them configured properly." Truth is, they don't like them and the providers don't want to train their people. But, they better get used to it because they're going to have to implement them in their own set top boxes eventually. That is of course, if the FCC follows through on the integration ban.
If you look at the results of this poll, 75% of the people are having successful installations on the first trip. I have read the S3 threads from the beginning, and the first install threads were cablecard nightmares. Like in my company, it was a true learning experience for many contractors and field techs. Today, our guys rarely have any problems getting cablecards installed. I think the results of the poll show the same. I will leave Cablevision out of this, though. :)